


Necromancer (the Fairy Godfather Remix)

by lynndyre



Category: Tales of the Abyss
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fairy Tale, Gen, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-03-19
Updated: 2012-03-19
Packaged: 2017-11-02 04:44:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,135
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/365094
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lynndyre/pseuds/lynndyre
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Once upon a time there was a little boy.  This is how he grew up.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Necromancer (the Fairy Godfather Remix)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Cephy](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cephy/gifts).
  * Inspired by [Happily Ever After](https://archiveofourown.org/works/260393) by [Cephy](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cephy/pseuds/Cephy). 



> Inspired also by the events in Reminiscences of Jade, Vol 1.

Once upon a time there was a little boy who found a fairy ring, and fell asleep inside of it. In many stories he might never have been heard from again. And perhaps the world would have breathed easier if he had vanished.

He was a very smart boy, though not necessarily a very nice one. He lived in the coldest reaches of a land ruled by a fairy king, and his companions were a kobold and the youngest prince of the kingdom. Together they explored the world, in search of monsters and adventure. But the most important thing the boy looked for was knowledge, and because of this his teacher was his favourite person in the world.

The boy's teacher was a powerful mage, learned in every magical art. She taught the boy every discipline she could, nurturing him along the way, for she knew his power had the potential to outstrip even her own. But there was one thing she could not teach him, and that was healing, because to heal with magic requires more than just power and will.

The boy didn't believe in limitations, for he had never before reached his own. He gathered all the reaches of his magic, but lacking the understanding to heal he could not complete the spell. The monster he had sought to practice upon died, as had all the others before it, but the magic continued to build, allowed no outlet. The explosion would have killed the boy, if his teacher hadn't saved him. 

Instead it killed his teacher.

The boy didn't cry, because the empty places inside him were patched with magic rather than understanding. He knew now he could not heal her, instead the boy resolved to _remake_ her. The being thus created was the first changeling. Its form was exactly like to that of the boy's teacher, but its mind was spears of light and daggers of broken shadow, and it was altogether evil. The boy knew he had failed, but he didn't know why. He missed his teacher. 

He resolved to try again.

The boy grew into a man, the kobold gained a more comely fairy likeness, and the prince remained a prince (though perhaps inside he grew the most of all). The man continued his quest to revive his teacher.

On the battlefields, the man let his magic lead him to the dying. As breath and blood and life left them, one by one, he catalogued their deaths, searching for that quality that made each one the person he was. He hovered over man and fey, enemy corpses and allies alike, until those he fought with and those he fought against jointly christened him Necromancer. But while the world saw and talked of his actions in war, only the kobold saw and aided him in the arcane laboratories beneath the city's stones. Changeling after failed changeling were birthed empty-minded, flawed, imperfect, and died at the necromancer's hands as he sought his answers.

The prince told him no. The failure lay not in the magic, but in the thing being attempted. The necromancer refused to believe his knowledge was insufficient. Inside him, the boy refused to believe his teacher was gone forever. So he raised his chin and defied his prince. The next attempt, he resolved. The next would succeed. Using his own body, his own mind, to fuel the memory of the woman he wished to create, the next attempt came the closest of any to reuniting him with his teacher in the afterlife. While his own magic sucked away his life-force, the man reached out to his teacher's ghost, and saw her smile as her hand passed through fingers. As he regained his strength, jaw darkening in the shape of a royal fist, he began to build a new resolution.

The prince was happy to regain his friend. The man was learning to be happy in himself, finding a world to explore beyond the single purpose he had limited himself to for so many years. But the kobold did not understand, knew only that what had been their life's work was now abandoned, and felt betrayed. In night, in anger, the kobold stole away from the fairy kingdom, and he took with him the spells and knowledge that he had helped the man create. He took refuge with the church, fitting himself imperfectly and self-importantly into the rigid workings of people and doctrines and manipulation. There the kobold met a churchman, strong and brave and angry, who believed man and fey alike needed to be reborn, redeemed. And the kobold told the churchman he knew how. And so the knowledge of changelings and their creation passed into the hands of a churchman who sought to destroy the world.

Years passed. War ended. Treaties were made. In the kingdom of man, a child was stolen away and replaced with a changeling. Unable to walk, speak, reason, the changeling learned as a baby does, and slowly grew into its created body. The stolen child was told he could never return home, there was no longer a place for him. The churchman took him in, taught him and twisted him, and so cursed him forever. 

The necromancer bent his magic to peacetime work, and surprised himself by taking pleasure in it. The fairy king died, and the youngest prince succeeded him, taking the throne with wings of sapphire and gold, tiny rappigs fluttering at his shoulders. The necromancer let the smallest of them alight on his hand, porcine wings slowly fanning.

As tensions rose once more, the necromancer carried his prince-king's words of peace into the kingdom of man, in the company of a prophet and a goblin-girl. They met a church soldier, a princess, a deposed nobleman... and they met a child. And the necromancer began to suspect that when he'd smothered his research, he hadn't held the pillow down long enough.

Returning by stealth to the fairy capital, the necromancer sought out his prince-king-friend. I know what the child is, the necromancer said. He was made for a purpose, made to be manipulated into doing someone's bidding. Already he has been used to destroy. His creator must be stopped.

The king smiled, because the necromancer spoke of strategy and protection, control and guidance. The man who had filled a dungeon with corpses born and killed by his own hand, was seeking to help a changeling. The king was proud of his friend, and pulled him close, until the dust from his wings settled in the necromancer's skin, and cool hands returned his embrace.

And the king told the necromancer his newest orders, and watched him frown behind his spectacles. The king only smiled wider.

It would be good for him. And the changeling-child couldn't ask for a better fairy godfather.

  
[](http://smg.photobucket.com/albums/v294/lynndyre/?action=view&current=Rappigfairy.jpg)


End file.
